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During the recent federal election, you may have seen media reports claiming a Government of Canada study disagreed with the approach of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

And, more specifically, that controlling emissions by government regulation ­— Harper’s approach — would be the worst possible strategy, compared to the superior one of creating a cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions, as advocated by the opposition parties.

The “money quote” from this federal discussion paper was that: “This option (regulation) is the most expensive, both in terms of overall economic impact and costs to government.”

The problem with these stories is that they were nonsense, goosed by environmental activists spinning media who apparently didn’t know enough to ask the right questions to put the government study in its proper context.

Let’s do that now.

The first relevant point is that this report was written by federal civil servants in 2002 — the year Jean Chretien and his Liberal majority government idiotically ratified the Kyoto accord, without having a clue about how to achieve its target requiring Canada to cut emissions by an average of 6% below 1990 levels, between 2008 and 2012.

We know Chretien had no idea of what he was doing because for the previous nine years of Liberal majority government, he did nothing to achieve his 1993 election promise to lower Canada’s emissions to the far more severe target of 20% below 1988 levels by 2005.

Of course, since achieving even the Kyoto target would have devastated our economy, Chretien’s strategy during his entire time as PM on this issue can at least be described as consistent — he repeatedly promised the moon and repeatedly did nothing.

This was the Alice-in-Wonderland political climate (pardon the pun) in which this 2002 government report was written.

Basically, it outlined ways to achieve a target everyone connected with it knew, or ought to have known, was both unachievable and impractical in the real world.

The biggest alarm bell that should have gone off for media reporting on all this in 2011, was not just that the 2002 discussion paper was nine years out of date, but that it was written three years prior to the Jan. 1, 2005 start-up of the one, significant, real-world example we have of a cap-and-trade market in carbon dioxide emissions.

That’s Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

And a “scheme” is exactly what it has turned out to be — plagued by multi-billion-dollar tax frauds and built on a carbon credit system riddled with fraud and corruption.

Not only did the ETS not lower emissions — they kept rising until the 2008 global recession — the biggest losers were ordinary Europeans, hit with higher energy bills and retail prices, while the biggest winners were energy companies, speculators and organized crime.

While the authors of this 2002 report can be excused for suggesting a cap-and-trade scheme in carbon dioxide emissions might work in theory, it was absurd in 2011 to report on its findings, without citing the real-world experience with cap-and-trade since 2005.

Which brings us to the report’s argument government regulations won’t work as well as cap-and-trade.

Actually, it’s hard to imagine anything could be worse, or less effective, than cap-and-trade, including a carbon tax.

But the real issue is that Harper’s promised emission reduction of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 — less than the Kyoto standard — still exists solely in the realm of political fantasy.

To achieve even that, as Prof. Andrew Leach of the University of Alberta School of Business has noted, would require the equivalent of shutting down the entire Canadian transportation sector within nine years.

Then again, if we’d elected an NDP minority government on May 2, Jack Layton would now be busily concocting a Canadian cap-and-trade market modeled on, you guessed it, Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme.